Things guys have done

I'm always up for a good read I find online via a couple clicked links. I'm even more up for that good read if it involves something I can, like, totally relate to. It gets even better if it's soemthing funny. Factor in a points system and it's fucking gold.

All of the above happened as I read Things Guys Have Done. Sadly (or happily) I can fess up to about 95% of the items listed including melting ice at a urinal, belching sentences and eating so much at a buffet that I pooped and came back for more because it was probably the best meal I was going to have in quite some time.

Those items take me back to a time when I could get away with not doing the dishes for a week. Not because I didn't want to do them (I really didn't want to do them) but because why in the hell would I need to wash 2 plates, a bowl and three glasses? There's a whole cupboard of those very items left and they're clean. But if I open the fridge and it's looking empty it's off to the liquor store because it's better to be safe than sorry - especially when it's 10:05 PM on a Saturday night and your only options are to drive to Iowa way too early on Sunday morning or head to an off-sale shop and pick up some overpriced 3.2 beer that would make most people consider brewing their own bathtub gin.

Those are the decisions that plague the modern male.

Even more decisions await about busying your weekend. A few ideas, in photo form, live at MinnPics.

Behold the Cock Shot

It's a great take off of Vince (the Sham-Wow guy) and his stupid ad for the Slap Chopper plus it actually made me laugh to the point that I had tears in mye eyes (And not from the garlic on the guy's twig). I've never heard so many differing phrases alluding to penis but watch the video, share the link and laugh (but turn down your volume a bit).



And when you're done laughing at coarse humor, click over to MinnPics and enjoy a bit of culture.

Pepsi vs. Coke in logos

I'm not some sort of soda junkie but I do pay attention to the logo, design and marketing trends of the "big guys". I don't really see much in the way of a true cola war because, let's face it, you aren't going to change anyone's opinion. Flavor is a subjective thing and one person's opinion isn't going to change that of another.

The logos, though, are what intrigue me. Pepsi (Pepsi-cola) has has an always evolving string of logos since their inception. Coke (Coca-Cola) on the other hand has stayed the course. Sure, Coke has changed the design of their cans by adding a sprinkling of yellow for a time but they recently went back to a simplistic red motif that harkens back to their roots. It's almost like Coke realizes that they have a deep and strong heritage and both rely and build on that. Pepsi seems to be going in the exact opposite direction. They have thrown away any shred of heritage in favor of being trendy. I personally feel that Pepsi's first few iterations of their logo were merely minor tweaks in the typography. The basic idea was still the same and those, if they had stuck with it, could have been even more iconic than Coke's unchanging logo.



The ultimate lesson here is that if it ain't broke, don't fix it and by that I can assume that Pepsi is broken.



Now that you're visually aware, visit MinnPics and see what you missed this past weekend and find out what you shouldn't miss next weekend!

Minnesota Twins interested in my HS classmate?

According to Twins writer, LaVelle E. Neal, III, the Minnesota Twins may be interested in trading for Oakland A's reliever Michael Wuertz (whom the Star-Tribune referred to as Chris in the lede). After his time with the Iowa Cubs and then the Chicago Cubs waaaay back when I was still living in Austin, I had lost track of the pitcher who graduated with me in the late 90s from Austin High School. I sort of figured that he had slipped back into the minor leagues and was sort of there to stay. It's how I assume things happen with people associated with Austin.

I think it's pretty cool that a kid that I don't really remember making a name for himself in high school (maybe he was as low key in sports as he was in school) could be headed for the home team right here in his home state. A truly nice guy pulling down just over a million dollars per year would be a nice compliment to a team who pride themselves on grooming players from within the state and would pair well with the face of the team and fellow Minnesotan, Joe Mauer.

Maybe I can even unearth the "Wuertz Watch" series of graphics I designed in 2001 for the Austin newspaper and prove just how damn legit this whole thing is - if I can find that particular stack of CDs.

And if you want to put a face to the name, maybe I can dig up a fan photo of Wuertz for MinnPics.

FOUND IT:Wow. My work circa 2002 borders on something I'd rather not claim as my own. Ouch.

Skinny-dipping record set right here in Minnesota

Skinny-dipping record set right here in Minnesota

I wouldn't say that I have a fascination with nudist camps but maybe it could be described as a curiosity. That's why this story about the world record for skinny-dipping, set with help from a camp in East Bethel, Minnesota, caught my eye. No, it wasn't the small and non-descript photo showing 222 naked midwesterners bobbing in a pool but the accompanying story that piqued my interest.

I've always been curious about nudists - I remember my mom mentiong at least once the phrase "nudist colony" (I figured it to be a bunch of naked Amish folks). It's not that I'd like to peek through the bushes and watch naked folks (women) stroll around all day because the fact is that most of the people who live the nudist lifestyle would be best seen clothed. I'm more curious about the day to day happenings at a nudist camp.

Think about the cooking siutation at Avatan Nudist Camp. Would just an apron afford enough protection as you stand in front of the stove with hot grease popping out of a frying pan? I'm thinking that in the groinal region, a grease spatter would truly hurt. So, unlike the CityPages writer who shelved his stupid questions about nudism, I put my stupid questions right out there for all the world to see (much like my naked strolls out to the mailbox).

Where do nudist camp-goers keep their keys? What about that special time of the month for the ladies? How is that handled at Avatan or other nudist camps? I understand the politeness of carrying a towel at all times to sit on but, and here comes my trappings as a mildly prudish Minnesotan, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. For instance, does anyone really want to see a naked person straining to open a over-tightened jar of pickles? I didn't think so. Do you really want to see one of your fellow nude campers do a deep bend at the waist to pick up a dropped item? That could be a hairy situation.

But hey, the nudists who hang out (literally) at the East Bethel camp are doing what they enjoy - they just happen to be naked so kudos to them for being comfortable enough with themselves to stroll around naked with 200 of their closest naked friends. I actually envy them because I'm the guy who's been shamed into putting his shirt back on.

Nudity hasn't been featured on MinnPics but that doesn't mean you shouldn't check out the killer photos featured every damn day!

At least it wasn't a donkey punch

"There's no way you can give me a bloody nose."

To anyone of any age, that's a challenge you'd be an idiot to pass on. It's a free pass to ram your fist into a willing victim's nose with the ultimate goal to inflict pain on another person. Of course at five years old the ramifications of this don't really register.

That tale and more are just part of the random and confusing memories of my childhood.

I chalk it up being easily influenced by friends and the bloody nose was no different. The victim in this story was the older brother (yep, older) of my best friend at the time. I don't really recall how we found ourselves in this conversation that could lead nowhere good but it started with the older brother uttering that sentence doubting my strength (and aim).

So I started punching him. Being five years old I am fairly certain that these were not Mike Tyson-like blows but after a few minutes (and probably a rather sore fist) there was blood pouring down this kid's face. Chalk it up to his stupidity (who challenges anyone like that?) and my eagerness to prove myself but the end result as the bus pulled up to the elementary school on Austin's west side was one bloody seven year old and a five year old confused about why he was in trouble. At least the older brother (who was the instigator here) didn't throw me under the proverbial bus on this one.

I know that we both ended up spending the before-school recess sitting in the principal's office for a week and that my parents were "very disappointed" in me. Thus began a couple trends for me. That time spent in the principal's office wasn't the last.

MinnPics is violence-free as I am a reformed guy. Check out the great photography unearthed daily!

Another cable TV spinoff

Cable television is easy to figure out from a programming aspect. Find a hit show, produce endless spinoffs. Bam!

It's the formula for success. Particularly at the former music channels like VH-1 and MTV. Laguna Beach begat The Hills. Hogan knows Best gave us Brooke Knows Best. Rock of Love gave us Daisy of Love (and everyone on both shows various STDs). Flavor Flav's dating shows gave us Charm School. See? It's all about the spin-off.

But what about some of the older shows? I'm thinking of Pimp My Ride from earlier this decade on MTV. It would have been a piece of cake to spin off. The possibilities of items which could be pimped are endless.

Particularly this one.

Dammit MTV, if you don't run with this one and whatever you interpret it to mean you are bigger fools than I had ever guessed.

Hint: Pimp My Wife could be about blinging out your tired, old wife or it coud be about turning your wife in to a streetwalking prostitute turning tricks for a pimp who ain't afraid to slap a ho.

Now that I've covered how to televise pimping of wives, check out the killer photos at MinnPics. If you don't I'll come up with more bad TV show ideas.

Online gems

Every day, millions of professionally- and self-published items hit the internet and today I stumbled across two...

The first is from my old hometown's newspaper...

A 34-year-old Austin man was arrested Sunday for allegedly attacking another man with a chair leg.

The second one comes from a Craigslist ad...
sew my stupid ugly clothes back together (minneapolis, uptown)
i wear a lot of stupid ugly clothes. i am very particular about the stupid way that i dress, so when something like a pair of pants has a hole in the crotch, i am devastated. that being said, i am pretty devastated over a few pairs of pants. usually i have my mom sew them, but she lives out in bloomington and honestly, i feel she half-asses the job because she thinks i dress like her father did in the 1970s. she has a track record of (possibly intentionally) ruining my clothes, but i like to assume it is an accident because i dont like imagining that my mom is capable of being all cunning and mean.

i also have a shirt that needs a bit of alteration and a pair of pants that could use some shortening for my gnome-like legs.

if you can aid in this task, i will pay you money or take you to a local Chuck E. Cheese where you can play skee-ball while i cry about my childhood. you don't even have to do that good job a job - just make sure they stay together.

sincerely yours,
crotchhole jackson

Location: minneapolis, uptown
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation: tell me how much you want and i'll tell you how much i want to give you. we will work out a number using a sophisticated spreadsheet my roommate can design because he's a dork.

Even more gems reside at MinnPics. I am sure something good was photographed this past cool weekend and I'll share it with you today!

Distracted driving: dangerous or not?

There is an epidemic in this country. People do alot of stupid crap while driving. This list is dangerous things to eat while driving.

Coffee
Hot soup
Tacos
Chili dogs
Hamburgers
Ribs and wings
Fried chicken
Jelly donuts
Soda
Chocolate


Out of that list, I've taken part in consuming tacos, hamburgers, fried chicken, jelly donuts, soda and chocolate while driving. I'm preplexed about why anyone would ever eat ribs and wings while driving. Coffee is fairly common but chili dogs are straight up messy and pose the risk of spilling the chili or dog in your lap. And eating some hot soup could be tragic if it was in a bowl but less tragic if it were in a cup.


Outside of eating/drinking while driving, there are other activities that I've done while driving that I probably shouldn't have done that could have caused some serious bodily harm to myself or others.


Changing my shirt on the freeway
Taking off jeans and putting on shorts
Changing my shoes
Endorsing checks
Getting to know a lady better (draw your own conclusion)
Undressing a passenger
Munching down some Arby's chicken fingers complete with BBQ sauce
Cleaning the inside of my windshield
Tucking in my shirt

I'm sure there are others but I'm curious what you worst moments were while driving. Have you ever started knitting a sweater or trimmed up your private bits?

MinnPics is a great habit. Althought I wouldn't check it out on your iPhone while driving.

Turning over a new leaf

I'm back to running. Yep, I started running later last summer after I was shit-canned from my second job. It was a mixed blessing of sorts because it gave me back that time after my day job and came just as gas prices were starting to take a nosedive. On the other hand, it came just as my hours were cut at my day job (they have yet to come back).

Whatever the case, I realized that as I approached the ripe old age of 30, I needed to do something to improve myself. Maybe it's a part of my constant need to reinvent myself every so often. That's probably due, in part, to the fact that today's world moves so damn fast - I see the change all around me and find myself being bored. Not just with things around me but flat out bored with myself.

To combat that self-boredom, I became ultra-active in my after-work hours. I'd bring my running crap (shirt, shorts, shoes) with me to the office, change after my newly-shortened day and drive to a nearby park with a ton of trails that seemed custom designed for a nice run. Now there's no way in hell that I'd ever be ready to run in Grandma's Marathon but I began to see a change.

I felt healthier, looked better and while I didn't lose any weight (most would say that I don't need to lose any weight) I looked trimmer and leaner and generally more toned. I was impressed that this could happen with just three days a week and tackling what amounted to a mile or two each time.

Well, last night, after a few weeks of wondering what I could do to change myself again, I reverted back to running. The first excursion was delayed a bit after I dug for my iPod's set of at-home earbuds and my well-fitting running shoes. It didn't last long and as I walked up my driveway after the relatively short run I quickly realized that this isn't an option; I need to keep this up. I am so painfully out of shape (but hide it well) that I can't not do this.

I'll be spending the next few months working on my running again. Am I alone here? What do you do to reinvent or simply improve yourself?

And speaking of improvement, I'll be out this weekend taking a few photos that may or may turn up on MinnPics.

Hooray! The recession is over!

Well, if I read it on Slate, it has to be true. Or dripping with sarcasm. Which is exactly how I like things to be.

If this recession, which at times still has me scurrying for a box to pack up everything on and in my desk, is over does that mean that I will someday get back to working 40 hours each week for fifty-two weeks each and every year? Will the jobs produced with this magical recovery have benefits associated with them or will they be service-type jobs as the Home Depots of the world again needlessly expand into ridiculously small markets that even under the best of conditions would be unable to support them?

Or will the rich white guys whose pockets are never pilfered during a downturn wise up and bring jobs back from overseas? Has our love-hate relationship with cheap-costing but shittily-made Chines crap come to an end? Will we finally realize that you do get what you pay for? Will Americans realize that you don't need to have one of everything? Or would such a realization hold us back from a consumer-driven recovery?

Hell, I don't know crap about the economy but I will say that this downturn has produced some up-and-coming candidates for Dumpy Strip Malls right here in the south metro of the Twin Cities. Who could have imagined that a coffee shop every six blocks was unnecessary? Who could have ever guessed that the world didn't demand six auto parts stores all along a two mile stretch of highway? And dammit if I didn't see a surplus of beads coming. After all, beads make the world go round and if we can't have a bead store in every strip mall, the terrorists will surely win.

MinnPics is alot like the Energizer bunny,it keeps going regardless of what shape the economy is in because art of all formats makes the world a better place.

Photos shouldn't be stolen

I'm all about sharing content online. With one caveat. Link back and attribute that shared content to the original creator. I've been very stringent about this area with the content I share via MinnPics. The photographers who take those photos work hard and are proud enough and generous enough to share their content with the world and everyone should respect that work.

But what happens when the shared content online lands in a print publication where the publication earns money from someone's free content? If you're south metro (Minneapolis) blogger Bill Roehl, you send the offending This Week Newspapers (and parent company ECM Publishing) an invoice for $300 for using the unattributed photo. But being skinflints who seem to be in the business of devaluing the work of others while profiting from it, they ponied up a mere $50.

This isn't the first time something like this has happened and, because of unscrupulous and uncaring business people, it definitely won't be the last. I have seen it happen within my own office. Someone will demand a particular image for a client and while we do our best to use something from one of our vast subscription image services, we have very little pull in the situation and when push comes to shove the demanding party usually succeeds in pilfering an image from someone's website.

The obvious problem with this is that the image from whatever website was chosen may (or may not) be copyrighted by that particular website. It may have been stolen from another website by a flat out shitty web designer. We go round and round about how Google image search isn't an art source full of images free for the taking. Those images belong to other people and not everything you view on your monitor is yours to download and re-use. The second problem with using content residing online is that the resolution is about 1/4 of what is optimal for printed materials so while it is "free" the quality is basically shit so you've broken a law or two and shortchanged paying customers by providing lower quality images.

Another possibility is receiving a client's okay to use an image that resides on their website. They demand it and know that because it's on their website, they own the image. Or at least they think they do. This happened a few years ago with a client who chose an image (shitty as it was) from their website for a print publication. The problem was than an unscrupulous web designer had stolen this particular image from another website (a large fitness club rhyming with wifetime) and we were stuck in the middle with a rather strongly worded letter full of legalese. While this taught a couple people a lesson, it didn't percolate down to the rest.

The lesson here is to attribute people properly and if you're unsure about an image, ask questions or simply don't use it. If you don't like hassles, be honest and quit being thieving pricks. Yes, I'm looking at you This Week Newspapers.

Now that I'm off of my soapbox, head over to the Creative Commons obeying MinnPics and shower down kind words on the fabulous photos showcased there. (And if you're in the south metro this week, it's the final week of exhibition of the artwork from the Savage Art Show. The photo I entered is on display at Associated Bank in Savage, MN)

Divorcing a generation

If you're up for some reading today...

Dear Old People Who Run the World,

My generation would like to break up with you.

Read the rest of it here and see if any part of the "Generation M Manifesto" matches up with your way of thinking. I spotted one contradiction of sorts but, for the most part, it does seem to describe the way my generation (late Gen X - early Gen Y) views the world. Plenty of us have accepted the fact that we will be the first generation to not "do better" than our parents. We don't feel stuck but we are pessimistic at best because of this vast generational divide.

Our parents were the "big business is good" folks and we are the technology generation who are fast, nimble and flexible in our ways of working. Looking back ten years, I never could have imagined that my job would be where it is now. A world of interactivity and instant feedback seemed only a dream in 1999 but here it is and if you don't grasp it and become familiar with it, you'll be left behind in a cloud of dust.

I'm curious about you thought on the manifesto. Do you agree with it or totally disagree? Are there gaping faults with it?

And if you're so done with the written word, I suggest checking out the final day of the First Birthday Celebration at MinnPics. Dozens of photos made the cut and you should check them out because these are truly the cream of the crop in the days predating the existence of MinnPics..

The origin of the word "nipple"

Nipple. Like many words in the English language, it has its origins in a language foreign to our own. Nipple has its origins in the ancient Gaelic language and means hard or sharp protrusion.

If the true meaning of nipple were used in a sentence, it would read as follows: I popped a tire because I ran over a nipple on the highway.

Most Americans would read that and think that a very cold woman was laying naked on the highway and the person speaking that sentence had indeed committed manslaughter. Most Americans, though, would be wrong solely due to the education system failing them on an epic level. I do think that the popular misconception of "most Americans" defining the word "nipple" as pertaining to anatomy has some basis in the word's true definition and heritage. Just the other day I saw a woman wearing a tank top whose nipples could have actually popped tires.

Now that I have the origin or nipples out of the way, check out MinnPics and it barrels through its First Birthday celebration all week long. Plenty of amazing photos predating the existence of MinnPics so go now!

No real hangover this weekend

The July 4th weekend has come and gone. It wasn't the most stellar of wekeends but it definitely wasn't a complete bust. I didn't end up in jail overnight or anything that was more likely to have happened a few years back. No four day-long benders or burning off my eyelashes just because the gas grill wouldn't light.

I did get a damn good meal Friday night on a rare night out without the baby. We also got to see The Hangover (HILARIOUS!). July 4th could have been mildly better in the form of lasting longer. A soggy start as we pulled out of the driveway led to sunny skies which, of course, sparked a mini deluge of sorts that drove us to end the outdoor festivities early before we were struck with lightning and completely drenched.

Wrapping those events up early meant a rather boring night as you can't very well take an 8 month old to fireworks at 10 PM because that will lead to much crying and screaming.

Oh well, at least today starts the epic week that is the first birthday of MinnPics. All I can say is that it's huge. Check back frequently and by that I mean hourly starting at 1 PM today.

An important announcement

From here on, Fridays will be known as Pants-Free Fridays. Yep, it's pretty much self-explanatory and if you need an explanation you'll probably never enjoy Pants-Free Friday. This was inspired by seeing this link mentioned in a tweet this morning about a clothing optional farm in Wisconsin. Be careful when bailing hay, it's scratchy enough on the arms, imagine it on the... crotchal region. Ouch.

One more thing: the long weekend is officially a Socks-Free Weekend. Yep, my socks come off the minute I leave work Thursday and I vow to not put socks back on my feet until Monday morning. What are some of your long weekend plans?

Mine involve both of the above mentioned items as well as snapping a few photos for MinnPics.